Cash and Ballots: The Latest on Campaign Finances, Turnout

Signs at a Get Out the Vote Rally for Prop A and Prop B at Kick Butt Coffee on April 29 (photo by John Anderson)

Campaign finance reports filed eight days before the May 6 election continue to show a lopsided fundraising advantage for the progressive Prop A side of the race. Equity Action, the group doing the vast majority of fundraising in support of Prop A, pulled in $3,510 in contributions from March 28 to April 26, but spent more than $240,930, and still had about $240,000 cash on hand. The latest report shows mostly small-dollar donations from people living in Austin, but the campaign, overall, has been buoyed by a few large contributions from progressive-leaning organizations. One is a $125,000 check from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, an Oklahoma-based foundation that has funded similar progressive causes around the country, as well as causes in Israel.

Prop B supporters continue to raise barely any money at all – at least from what can be gathered by public reports. The Austin Police Associa­tion's political action committee still has not posted a campaign finance report to the city clerk's website, so it is unclear if they are raising or spending money on Prop B, which they publicly support. Voters for Oversight and Police Accountability, however, posted a fundraising total of $5,250 from March 28 to April 26, spending just $1,543; they had $9,023 cash on hand when the report was filed. There were only two contributions to VOPA: one from an individual for $250 and one from the Committee for Public Safety Fort Worth Police Officer's Association for $5,000.

Election Day is Saturday, May 6. We'll share one last look at what each campaign raised and spent in our election wrap-up next week.  – Austin Sanders

Early Voting Totals Spell Trouble for Voter Engagement

Early voting ended May 2 for the upcoming election on two police oversight ordinances, and the total turnout for early voting was a little under 7% of the county's registered voters (50,350 votes total from April 24 to May 2). That's not a good showing. Consider that in the early voting period for the November 2021 election over Save Austin Now's ordinance to increase police staffing, roughly twice as many TravCo voters cast a ballot.  – Maggie Q. Thompson